This is a blog about living without a car in Providence, RI. It is not intended to be an anti-car manifesto, in fact, I love cars (see my first post “An Introduction“). I just think that with a few adjustments to their lifestyle, most people could live without owning a car, or at least without driving it every day.
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Car-Free in PVD 
Dear Providence anti-car organizer, I am co-author (with Bianca Mugyenyi) of the forthcoming book Stop Signs: Cars and Capitalism on the Road to Economic, Social and Ecological Decay. We are planning a tour begining in mid May in the North East and continuing into summer. We are trying to make the book publicity part of local transportation campaigns be it for bike paths, more accessible bus fare, car free streets etc. Would you have any interest (or know others who might) in helping to organize an event? ….
[I deleted the rest of this comment because it was about 4 times longer than my “about” page. Maybe I need to create a “contact me” link or something]
ummmm. okay. maybe I need to put some sort of contact box on here – not sure how to do that though….
1) Yves, You had me..up until Cathedrals are built for cars. ?What? Pope mobile?
2) Anyway, as I’ve already tweeted: i love this idea.. been trying to figure this out myself since RI/MA is so transit hostile. Riding a bike is great exercise but tough when you’ve got little ones.. when they’re really tiny they can sit on that little backseat thing and once they are really older they can help assist pedaling with a tagalong attachment or bike-for-two. I feel those little caboose things are dangerous, for several reasons.. anyway
Keep up the good work.
I may have to delete Yves’ comment since it’s longer than my “about” page – by a factor of 20 or so. Not really sure what the whole cathedral thing was about – some car dealerships are particularly designed to instill awe in the customer in the same way a cathedral is designed to instill awe…. maybe that’s it.
Riding with kids is certainly more of a challenge. I don’t have kids, so I don’t really know how to do it. I have some friends who occasionally ride with kids. One has a 4 year old who rides in a co-pilot child seat. Another uses a similar chair device on the back of a long wheelbase bike (Kona Ute). This friend lives in Rochester, NY – an even more transit-hostile place than around here. My Rochester friends have been living car-free there and are getting along just fine. It will be interested to see how they get around as their child gets bigger. One of the other bike bloggers in town – Matt from Bikes Can Work has a Bakfiets that he uses to transport his kids (and piles of groceries). His blog is worth a visit just to see the pictures of the little ones in the Bakfiets. There’s also Car-Free with Kids – but they live in Cambridge, MA which is much more transit-friendly than either Rochester or RI.
I wouldn’t expect many parents to go completely car-free, but you’d be surprised how many trips you can make by bike if you put your mind to it.
I was looking for a ‘contact me’ link but couldn’t find one – I wanted to let you know (so you might consider letting your readers know) about the New England Builders Ball, a handbuilt bike show, coming to Providence on Friday October 7. Full details can be found on these 2 links:
http://newenglandbuildersball.com/
https://www.facebook.com/newenglandbuildersball
Cheers!
Eric
Thanks Eric,
I left out the contact link because I like to remain icognito. I hope I can attend the builder’s ball, it looks pretty cool.